CR Taylor (Timber), a Yorkshire timber treatment company from northern England, has been fined £8,000 after a cocktail of toxic chemicals leaked from its site into a recreational lake. The company pleaded guilty to polluting the Doe Park Reservoir, contrary to section 85(1) of the Water Resources Act 1991, before Bingley magistrates on 26 March 2001.
Environment Agency had investigated CR Taylor in June 2000, after the company reported its incident to the Agency. The inquiry revealed that 18,000 litres of wood preservative had leaked from a corroded tank into the surrounding bund. The bund failed to retain the chemicals and 14,000 litres escaped into the reservoir.
The company maintained that the tank contained Protim 418, a preservative containing the insecticide permethrin and the fungicides propiconazole and tebuconazole. However, samples taken by the Environment Agency also found lindane, tributyltin and dieldrin.
CR Taylor was unable to explain the presence of the chemicals. All have been used in wood treatment in the past, but dieldrin was banned in 1989. The Agency measured dieldrin levels of 0.1 micrograms per litre, ten times the environmental quality standard. In mitigation, Taylor said that it had cooperated fully with the Agency and spent £100,000 on the clean-up operation.
ENDS Reports, 315, April 2001.
[This article first appeared in
Pesticides News No. 52, June 2001, page 5]